Over the past decade, technology's rapid progression has proven to be inescapable. Everything and everyone is somehow connected to a machine. We rely on them for directions, instant access to information, photography, work, entertainment, and communication. Technology has advanced our world in more ways than we could have ever imagined, and it only continues to grow. A product of this dramatic technological transition is social media. Sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter provide users with the opportunity to catalog a wide variety of interests and information about themselves, but one has to wonder how authentic this data really is.
Personally, when I look at these sites, whether it's a mom grossly representing a family vacation or friends who have quite literally warped their faces to look completely different from themselves, I always take it with a grain of salt which is why I find it so interesting to see boys use these internet profiles as their primary source of information.
Over my time on a college campus, what I have seen is a developed practice of choosing girls to pursue based off of their social media platforms. In conversation, when a girl is brought up, the boys never fail to ask for a look at her Instagram feed. They click through a few pictures, form a personal opinion about the girl, and then pass the phone off to their friends who will do the same, before coming to a conclusion about whether she is hot or not. The actual words in each post or the things the girl is doing in the posts do not matter. These occasions of stalking a girls profile are simply meant to show the boy what her face and body look like.
I have seen this phenomenon, especially within the fraternities. When the time comes around to find their next date to a date party, boys will completely base their decisions on a girl's Instagram. A few have even admitted to these actions, not even attempting to deny the fact that a girl's feed and how she looks in a picture is the only indicator they need when choosing a date. Screenshots of girl's Instagram profiles will be sent in fraternity GroupMe's, and the collective group of boys will "call dibs" based on these profiles.
This past week, I personally witnessed the superficial nature of boys making these decisions. I was out with a friend who met a girl that he proceeded to talk to for over 10 minutes. He got to know a little about her life, and a sense of her true personality. But later, a few hours after the conversation, he and his friends asked me to show the girl's profile so they could make a group decision as to whether he should extend an invite to the next date party, or if she wasn't up to their standards. These boys were convinced that a girl's social persona was a better indicator of who they are than how they actually acted in person. They made decisions based off of social media, and the support of their brothers, even when they had actually interacted with the girl just hours before.
I'm not quite sure what is worse, the fact that the boy in question was basing his date choices on social media feeds, or that he wouldn't move forward with his decision without the consensus of his brothers. Maybe it's expecting too much to think that somebody who is looking for a date would actually value a good conversation, personality, and other things that can't be readily gleaned from a few pictures. Or maybe Instagram on a college campus is just an understated version of Tinder and I shouldn't be so quick to judge.
Either way, what I do fear, especially with first-hand knowledge of an actual interaction being subordinated to information found via Instagram, is the effect of how we are choosing to learn about the people we surround ourselves with. If we continue to be so ignorant with the truth, our sensible instincts when it comes to personal opinions may be degraded, and we may force an unrealistic view of the world unto ourselves, and others.
